Shameless Plugs and Some Almost-Comedy

So I've been trying to get into standup comedy. As the type of person who sees my own life as a sort of long, bitingly sarcastic sitcom, going from making fun of life in my head to making fun of life in a grungy bar seemed like a sort of natural progression. It's come to my attention, however, that not everyone finds humor in the mundane, so mostly, this just makes me come off as a sarcastic butt-head. Occasionally, though people will toss me a few sympathy chuckles, and these have been enough to give me the grand notion that I am a comedic genius worthy of some small, dim-lit stage in a smoke-filled comedy club.


Now, when I began this post, my intent was to just throw down the rough first-draft transcripts of a couple jokes I've written to try and get some feedback... Unfortunately, things that are funny when performed and things that are funny when read don't always correlate.- It's like the difference between reading a play and actually watching that play (and if you've never had the experience of reading a play then seeing it in real life, then GET THEE TO A NUNNERY and by "nunnery" I meant "library" where you can bask in the glory of many a classical/contemporary script, and by "get thee to a nunnery" I was making a Hamlet reference, you uncultured swine)
BUT this is my blog, and I decide how it goes, so I'm throwing some jokes in here anyway, and there ain't nothin' you can do about it! I'll try to clean them up a bit so they're mildly humorous without being performed, but no promises.  (a couple of my stand-up ideas I've already presented here, so I won't bore you by rephrasing those. If you're curious, but don't wanna bother wading through previous posts, you should check these out:
http://alicenmoser.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-importance-of-b-word-and-ways-i-am.html
http://alicenmoser.blogspot.com/2013/10/basic-templates-for-interations-with.html
http://alicenmoser.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-boobs.html
http://alicenmoser.blogspot.com/2014/02/little-co2-emissions-on-prairie.html )


Once you've gone through them, I invite you to drown my hopes and dreams in a sea of white-hot criticism (seriously though, some feedback would be awesome, white-hot or otherwise)


On dating a decent human being
So I've been dating this guy for six months now, and he isn't aggressive, or sarcastic, or violent, or mean-spirited... and it's HORRIBLE. Because I am ALL of those things! And after SIX MONTHS of dating me he's remained unscathed by my repulsive personality. Obviously something must be done about this, so lately I've seen every interaction between us as a sort of challenge, to see how quickly I can drag this pure, kind-hearted human down to my level In every fight I am both the instigator and the escalator, and it's really pretty absurd, because no matter WHAT I do, he won't yell at me, won't insult me, won't push me back, and he doesn't even break things! And the WORST part is, I can't complain about it. Cuz if you go around telling your friends "All I want is for him to be horrible, just a little bit, just some foul language or a casual plate thrown against the wall" they don't Sympathize, they just say "You should get help" and start asking probing questions about your past.


On my imagined life as a citizen of Jefferson County.
I grew up knowing I was high class. I know it's not very Christian to compare myself to my neighbors this way, but it's hard not to notice that your home is the only double-wide in the park. What really set my family apart though, was a shameless status symbol we flaunted up on blocks in the front yard. Yes, the Moser family crown jewel: A rusting '88 camaro with velvet interior and maybe half an engine. It was a thing of beauty. I sometimes like to sit in it and imagine that I'm the queen of white trash, overlooking my trailer park kingdom.

~

I'm an adjunct professor at SLU. They don't pay me -yet- but I give daily lessons to the students there on white trash culture. Among other things, I try teach my students valuable life skills like h0w to wire a fuse box with pennies, or use a coupon, or pronounce the word "down" (day-own).
One girl I met, before I took her to on a little Jeffco field trip, thought that trailer parks were a myth... like, in her mind, werewolves, Santa Claus and trailer parks were on the same plane of existence. She's studying to be a surgeon, by the way.



On having rich friends
One thing I learned attending Saint Louis University is that people who pay 40,000$ for tuition then go shop at Nordstroms have money problems. Shocking. Cuz when I think of people having financial troubles, I think of people like myself, who order off the dollar menu and then steal all the hotsauce, not people drinking 10$ frappacinos with their vegan strudel. You really start to feel for them, though, because anytime you share a story about not being able to make a housing payment so you can keep yourself shacked up in the crappiest dorm on campus, they'll come back with something just as heart-wrenching, like how they blew the weekly allowance from their parents on an ipad yesterday and now they haven't got money left to buy weed for Saturday. Tragic.


__
So if you'd like to tell me all the reasons these are horribly unfunny and highly offensive concepts please comment!! ALSO If you happen to be a fan of things that are truly hilarious (and ESPECIALLY if you're an anime fan as well) you should stroll on over to my new blog-buddy's site right here http://havocmantis.blogspot.com/ -plot twist, not only are we blog buddies, but we are REAL LIFE BUDDIES. Our favorite bonding activity is doing naked improv comedy at gay bars. That's only barely an exaggeration.


~Alicen

This time, in honor of my blog buddy's distaste for haiku, I'll give you all a rhymey poem instead!

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Actually they're purple
Art is a lie

...well, I tried.

Little CO2 Emissions on the Prairie

Maybe it's just a Missouri thing, but it feels like no matter where I'm driving, if I'm on a highway I'm surrounded by those "Prairie Rehab" signs.
If you're unfamiliar, "Prairie Rehab" signs are just your average metallic, round-cornered road signs with the words "Prairie Rehab" deceptively printed on an earthy brown background. They are typically found where the grass has begun to reach human height, and often in mounds of dirt that are surrounded by interstate on all sides.

... So in other words, the Missouri translation of "Prairie Rehab" is: "We ain't trimming this $#!%". I imagine that when given their budget and faced with the choice between printing a metal sign and paying a friendly lawn-mowing person to make it look decent once a month, that official thought "eh, we'll go with the chunk of metal" and signed the order to slap'em up there.
Now, let's be real, Missouri. You CANNOT tell me you are going to call these grass-wads "rehabbed prairie" unless you have legitimate hopes that someday some wild buffalo will return to inhabit that 4foot patch of dirt and highway trash just inches from the interstate.
     -What's that? No highway buffalo, you say? -I suspected as much. Now just admit that you're too cheap and lazy to cut your own grass, and stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes with this phony "rehab" nonsense!

I think the idea of "Prairie Rehab" is that the city hopes we will see it, but not think about it too hard. Like, whatever city official put it up must have hoped that you would sorta glance at these signs from the corner of your eye, and then your subconscious would slowly begin to think "hey, my government gives out free rehab! I should go do my civic duty!" somehow without considering the fact that this rehab is for dirt, and not people. That official pictures you swelling with patriotic pride, and riding off into the sunset to finally start repaying your debts to society. You'll step out of your car after passing that "Prairie Rehab" sign and valiantly go... pay a tax.... or... stop smashing bottles on playgrounds....
Heck, I don't know what you do, I'm barely an adult.

(Personally, I harbor the secret hope that the government knows something we don't about the future of transportation, and in a few years, upon the advent of an age of teleportation, people will start going nuts about all the space wasted on parking lots and intersates, but the government will just whip around like "HA! WE'VE BEEN PREPARING THE PRAIRIELANDS FOR YEARS!!" and then there really WILL be buffalo on the interstate, and the previous paragraphs in this post will make me look very silly.
I think it's good to hold on to some faith in your governing body, even if it's based solely upon the fact that they may or may not be able to teleport at some unappointed time in the future.)

~Ali

My dog is fluffy
My kitty cat is snuggly
Those are not their names

Diamonds Are a Girl's Patriarchal Enemy

It's about time this blog stirred up a little controversy, so in the hopes that some neck-bearded "Red Pill" Redditor/ "Return of Kings" nutjob should stumble upon my humble blog I'd like to post some of my crazy bra-burning bodyhair-relishing feminist thoughts. This one is borrowed from something I wrote for class.

So today I was checking out people’s reaction to the Coca-cola ad shown at the Super-Bowl when I found this article http://happyplace.someecards.com/29052/5-things-you-should-at-least-pretend-to-know-today-february-3-2014 which introduced me to JCPenny’s “drunk tweets” during the Superbowl (the head of social media at JC Penny was actually texting with mittens on to promote their new Olympic Mittens, but check it out, they absolutely come off as intoxicated- Kia Motors asked if they wanted a designated driver. ha!)

Next I decided to visit the JC Penny twitter page myself in order to see the tweets, when I found this: https://twitter.com/jcpenney/status/430013553030881280/photo/1

Just in case that link doesn’t work/you have an irrational fear of twitter, that’s a picture advertising some diamond earrings with a tweet that says “You can throw these rocks at girls.” Edit: Of course, the day that I posted this, JCP Decided to take down the month-old ad

Okay, I realize that the US is not known for it's competency in international affairs, nor do I pretend to be especially literate in world goings-on, but I'd like to point out that it's only been THREE MONTHS since Afghanistan barely managed to keep public stoning as punishment for adultery from being reinstated as law (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/28/stoning-not-brought-back-afghan-president-karzai )

 And it's attitudes like this that diminish that hard-won victory for women's rights/human rights.

Also, the target audience for this confuses me a bit. Like, JCP decided to use a joke about “throwing rocks at girls” to win the hearts of… 

I suppose the much sought after demographic of American men who follow dept. stores on twitter and are also devoted to following the letter of sharia law. 

Or maybe all the people out there who wish they could throw rocks at girls? 

People who find violence against women hilarious?

Perhaps they are simply responding to a recent influx of people messaging JCP and asking what types of rocks are okay to throw at women, and "Diamonds" was at once the most lucrative and least logical answer they could provide for such a ludacris question.
-Not to mention all the MEN with ear piercings being hatefully excluded from this diamond-throwing extravaganza (men as a gender group are SOOO persecuted- amirite, neck-beards?)

  Hard to believe that the mitten-texts made news, but their demented sense of humor hasn't.

~Alicen

Feminism is

a word for equalism

Just love everyone